Sunday, May 16, 2010

Cosmocking: June '10!

Purple cover! Pink! She actually looks pretty badass and her dress is this awesome metal beaded futuristic thing, I would buy it! If they made it in Size Fatty! Which they almost certainly don't! "Fun Dates for Under $10!" Free dates are sometimes nice but somehow I would be much more skeptical of a $9.99 date!

Note where his urethra (the hole at the end of his johnson) is located. It should be right at the tip--not down near the shaft--in order to send sperm swimming in the right direction.This is like dog-show judging instructions. Also, unless he has severe hypospadias, the sperm can figure out their direction just fine. Sperm are actually pretty smart; they don't just go in a straight line and give up if they hit a wall. They're like little Roombas; they can figure out when to turn.

A boyfriend or husband who typically takes straight-on pics of you considers you his equal. But if he often shoots from above (angling the camera down at your head), he might be harboring resentment--like maybe he's pissed because you force him to go to parties on nights he'd rather stay home....huh.

He might also be taller than you.

The reason dudes are so optically oriented is that a male brain's "sex processor" (the area responsible for lusty thoughts) is more than twice as large as a woman's.Everyone knows what I think of this kind of thing, so I'll just say that it apparently comes from this article, which isn't sexist because it's Science. And that article also contains something I hadn't heard repeated as fact since seventh grade:Studies have shown that while a man will think about sex every 52 seconds, the subject tends to cross women's minds just once a day.If this is statistically true, there must be a couple hundred women who don't even know that sex exists, just to make up for me.

"During oral, my ex would do what she called the phone-home move. She'd set her phone to vibrate and hold it against my balls as she worked my shaft with her mouth."See, this is why you should just buy a vibrator, even if that is a dirty kinky thing that only sluts do: owning a vibrator can keep you from needing to fumble with confusing phone menus in the heat of the moment, and from having ball-sweat on your phone.

One of the most underrated positions is The Catcher.*snickers like an eighth grader*

(And yeah, this is a position where you squat over his dick like a baseball catcher. Hey batter batter...)

So what is important? Well, it's hard as hell to figure out because no dude is going to outright articulate what he needs from you to be happy.Well, unless you actually talk to each other. But we covered in the last issue what Cosmo thinks of that.

The male mind isn't organized like women's minds are [...] They don't spend time analyzing nuances; to them, things are black and white.Ladies: I think this is a very sexist and unfair characterization of men. Clearly, as shown in many works of art and writing by men and the experiences of men we all know personally, this is no more true for men than for women.

Gentlemen: MAGAZINE WRONG. MAGAZINE STUPID. THIS FUNNY.

The value men place on autonomy is biological: In prehistoric times, guys who mastered the solitary act of hunting were the ones who survived to pass on their genes.Do a lot of people even hunt alone today, let alone in the days when personal protection was a pointy stick and carcass transport was a non-pointy stick?

(Also, are humans ever going to get over being cavemen? Sheesh, we've had agriculture for like 11,000 years now, natural selection didn't just stop at that point, you'd think eventually being a competent modern human would have some reproductive value.)

Once you are together, however, [idiot "sexpert"] recommends giving your guy advance warning before doing things you've never done before. "You don't want to overstep boundaries" [...] For example, instead of just sinking your teeth into his shoulder, let him know what's in store by licking his shoulder and saying something like "Mmmm.. you taste so good!" and then giving him a little nibble. If he moans, you know he's into it.This is not how you give warning or ask permission. You do that by using your words or at least by physically making it clear what you're planning. This right here? Is neither of those. This is a setup for a hilarious story about how his crazy ex chomped on him like a shark out of fucking nowhere.

Focus on your "trigger fantasy": a red-hot, superexplicit, kinkylicious fantasy you can call up when you're on the brink of orgasm but need an extra push. Start by thinking of movie scenes that have turned you on like crazy, then combine and customize details to concoct one that's even hotter, naughtier, and more specific to your tastes.Movie scenes? Really? Well, I guess that scene in Spider-man where they kiss upside-down is kind of okay. Or the "ass to ass" scene in Requiem for a Dream, of course. Or the bit in Secretary where... actually a lot of bits in Secretary. I'm supposed to combine and concoct here, so I get... Tobey Maguire going ass-to-ass with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Okay, I admit it, I could probably get off to that.

Spend Way Less on GasFill up [your gas tank] in the morning. Since the temp is cooler, gas is denser, so you may get more for your money....is this true? Can it possibly be? This is like the insanest thing I've ever heard. This is so insane I might have to do math.

Gasoline has a coefficient of volumetric thermal expansion of 950 x 10-6 1/°C. That number describes the (change in volume/original volume)/change in temperature. It's awkward expressing this in text, but anyway, this means that a 1°C increase in temperature will increase the volume of a liter of gasoline by 0.95 milliliters.

In other words, if it's freezing in the morning and 100°F in the afternoon, and ignoring the fact that gas station tanks are underground, you would gain 0.6 teaspoons for every gallon of gas by fueling in the morning. With reasonable assumptions about your gas usage and cost, that'll be about... $1.23 saved in a year.

"My friend convinced me to get contacts for spring break, but I couldn't put them in. After 10 minutes of people bitching at me to hurry up so we could get to the beach, my friend came into my room to help. She made me lie on the hotel bed and straddled me. Just as she was yelling 'Let me put this in already!' my boyfriend burst into the room and saw two bikini-clad girls in bed struggling with each other.Does the person who writes these "confessions" have even the vaguest idea how contacts work?

Near the back, there's a hospital-themed fashion spread. It's all ridiculous and showcases very bad practices of course (IV tubing tied in a knot with a hemostat dangling on it? A Hoyer lift used for traction?) but it's notable for featuring a model attempting to look sultry and smoldering sitting on a CT scanner bed.

The best caption: "She thought he wasn't interested--until he said he would have to sex-ray her entire body."

17 comments:

Studies have shown that while a man will think about sex every 52 seconds, the subject tends to cross women's minds just once a day.

Well, waking to sleeping is once a day, right?

I'm more puzzled at the idea of a "sex strobe" mentality. I may be scatterbrained, but my stream of consciousness is never "Hey, sex! Ooh, something shiny! Hey, sex again!"

Also, from a media literacy perspective: "studies have shown"? Every time you hear that, you should ask "What studies? Performed by whom, and with what methodology?" Which usually leads (and in this case does lead) to "that's bullshit, because how would you even determine that?"

The "phone-home method" makes butt-dialing look tame. (Also doesn't sound as much fun as they think, but maybe that's just me.)

"The Catcher?" (*snickers too*). Also makes me wonder if across the pond they call it "The Wicket Keeper." And how "The Butterfly Save" would work.

They don't spend time analyzing nuances; to them, things are black and white.

HA!

Yes, clearly men don't ever fall into paralysis by analysis.

For example, instead of just sinking your teeth into his shoulder, let him know what's in store by licking his shoulder and saying something like "Mmmm.. you taste so good!" and then giving him a little nibble. If he moans, you know he's into it.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Because obviously anyone who gets off on "a little nibble" is going to just love , and not reach for the squirt bottle because she's acting like a misbehaving cat. Not to mention that "I want to..." and actually saying it, and making it clear that it's something you find exciting, will always "spoil the mood" more than simply going ahead and acting without warning. (Shoulder shark doesn't do anything for me, but if someone were to describe what they got out of it, I could possibly change my mind.)

To be fair, I suspect this isn't an example from idiot sexpert, but from the writer who really doesn't get the concept of men having boundaries, or the concept of a difference in degree actually being a difference in kind, and who was trying to come up with a version of "give warning" that didn't violate the "never actually converse with your partner" rule.

Also, are humans ever going to get over being cavemen? Sheesh, we've had agriculture for like 11,000 years now, natural selection didn't just stop at that point, you'd think eventually being a competent modern human would have some reproductive value.

Well, there's a little bit of evidence for this, but 11kyear is still pretty short. If we did properly evolve for agriculture, then sugar, calorie-rich diets should give us far fewer problems. Perhaps the most blatant example of modern evolution is lactose tolerance -- the ability to drink milk as an adult is a relatively recent innovation in humanity, and is far, far more common in European-descent ethnic groups than elsewhere.

The male mind isn't organized like women's minds [...] The value men place on autonomy is biological:Yes, because if your man doesn't want to spend time with you and makes snap judgments you can't question, it's his biology. I didn't know the "Jerkface" gene was on the Y chromosome.

let him know what's in store by licking his shoulder and saying something like "Mmmm.. you taste so good!" and then giving him a little nibble. If he moans, you know he's into it.... especially since after the chocolate sauce of last week, he could be thinking that's what you're after. But when communicating via desert condiment, remember to use an information-dense encoding. Morse code will do in a pinch, if you don't have the ASCII table memorized.OH YEAH STOP RIGHT THERE STOP THAT IS GOOD STOP MORE STOP MORE STOP MORE STOP YES STOP YES STOP YES STOP

Movie scenes? Really?Well, after making an entire magazine devoted to the idea that women should be identical, impossible-to-achieve clones of one another, how else can they obliquely give their readers permission to fantasize?

Just watch, next issue they'll warn women to only fantasize about their partners, or else they'll set themselves up for disappointment when he can't read the chocolate sauce on the wall.

...is this true? Can it possibly be? This is like the insanest thing I've ever heard. This is so insane I might have to do math.Another problem: gas pumps correct for this -- in Ontario, each pump has a sticker saying "Volume corrected to 10C" specifically to avoid these kinds of shenanigans.

Does the person who writes these "confessions" have even the vaguest idea how contacts work?I'm just wondering where she was trying to install them.

Okay, this gasoline tip...if gas did contract massively when it was cold out (allowing you to get a lot more for your money), and you filled your tank right up...hello, wouldn't you end up with a rather messy issue when it got hotter out and the gas expanded again?

And how do you calculate how often anyone thinks about sex? Do you sit with them for a day and ask them to say something whenever a sexual thought crosses their mind (because that sure wouldn't give unbiased results, nope)? What about women who don't want to look slutty so they minimize their numbers? What about men who want to look studly so they maximize their numbers? What does "thinking about sex" mean, anyway? I don't feel like my sex thoughts happen in discrete nuggets like that. The brain is infinitely complex and can handle many processes at once (or at least a woman's can, ha ha) so lots of times I'm at work or doing my taxes or hanging out with a friend and I'm having a constant stream of sexy thoughts in the background.

The ass-to-ass-with-Maggie-and-Toby thing made me shriek with laughter btw. Also: maybe I'm a supergenius, but I kind of figured out all by myself how to come up with sexual fantasies and use them to better my orgasms at age 11 or 12. It's always hilarious to me how Cosmo (apparently) aims itself at women who think of themselves as hot wild kinky beasts, but are actually so apathetic and clueless about all things sexual that they need detailed instructions on even the most rudimentary mechanics. "If he says he's feeling horny, touch him on the penis!"

Anon - OH YEAH STOP RIGHT THERE STOP THAT IS GOOD STOP MORE STOP MORE STOP MORE STOP YES STOP YES STOP YES STOPNow that's a mixed message if I ever saw one.

As for metabolism, I think calorie-rich diets are a lot newer than agriculture; being a subsistence farmer isn't like being a modern American with McDonald's access, and in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" it's pointed out that without modern (as in the last 100 years, not 11,000) technology a subsistence farmer can actually work more and eat less than a hunter-gatherer in some environments.

I don't know if I can point to a specific example of modern human evolution, though. (I do note that I'm descended from probably brownish people who migrated from the Middle East to Europe about 1000 years ago and were pretty fanatical about only marrying within the tribe, and I'm very white. I don't know if that's really "evolution" though or just proof that ha, I'm not the first one in the family to fuck a goy.)

Lactase persistence isn't even just found in European bloodlines, it's in certain African pastoralist groups as well. It's a lovely way to study recent patterns of human evolution, assuming you're strictly concerned with gene flow and dairying.

Also, I cannot think of a single example of ANY culture, modern or "primitive", in which hunting is NOT a group activity.

I saw something on the cover at the supermarket the other day and thought "I can't wait to see what Holly says about this." I don't remember what it was, though, so I can't deterine if you mentioned it.

Holly & anonymous -- in my understanding, while people haven't had times to evolve for a modern superfluity of food, there *are* evolutionary changes that take place with agriculture, having to do with other factors than just calorie intake. Groups that evolved with agriculture cope more easily with having large amounts of carbs/starches in their diet, since eating grain is much more rare if you have to randomly find it in the wild. That's why people of Native American-type people are more prone to diabetes, esp. if they adopt a Western junk food diet (not that it's good for anyone). That's also why they're more susceptible to alcoholism. No crops, no fermented drinks; groups that have had access to alcohol for thousands of years have evolved some resistance to alcoholism. There are tons of examples of this kind of thing. It's also my understanding that people can evolve greater resistance to heat or cold fairly quickly. But in any case, tens or thousands of years is a really short time in evolutionary terms, & some traits are less evolutionarily labile than others.

... anyway, all this is pretty irrelevant to a discussion of whether man can express their feelings or whatevs. Yes, the brain evolved on the savannah, but the point is it developed to be flexible, to learn throughout life, & to rely on shared cultural scripts rather than pure instinct. That's why humans are so different from most other animals. A brain that couldn't perceive any nuance wouldn't be good at helping its owner succeed in a complex social world. And if a guy grows up in a context where it benefits him in some way to "spend time analyzing nuances" (for instance maybe people like him better if he's not a social retard), he's probably going to develop that skill.

Holly, please learn how to use semicolons! The last two sentences of your second paragraph should read "Sperm are actually pretty smart; they don't just go in a straight line and give up if they hit a wall. They're like little Roombas; they can figure out when to turn.". You make this mistake all the time!

You know, the "communication via chocolate sauce" combined with the whole Cosmo ouvre of making me want to stab someone's eye out is now going to remind me of the way they used chocolate sauce for blood splatters in black and white film forever.

I was amazed that Pink was as hot as she was on this cover. That Cosmopolitan would let a cover model look strong and even a tiny bit butch... Incredible.

I never had much of an opinion on Pink until seeing her do an aerialist routine live in concert, while (I'm assured by a pop-culture literate friend) she actually did her own live singing. That's just freakin' unbelievable.

Sheesh, we've had agriculture for like 11,000 years now, natural selection didn't just stop at that point, you'd think eventually being a competent modern human would have some reproductive value.

Lots of people have the idea that civilization has "stopped evolution", because we don't let people die for being unfit. It's a superficially reasonable idea, but it turns out not to be the case. Not only does it misunderstand the biological meaning of "fitness", I recall one of the sciencey bloggers (I _think_ it was LabRat) linking to an article a while back about how civilization seems to have _accelerated_ human evolution, primarily due to our exploding population.

OMG. Don't expect men to tell you what they want. Men don't appreciate nuance. autonomy is more important to men than to women?!?! Seriously, WTF?

And apparently we need instructions on how to have sexual fantasies... ?

While I am a huge fan of the semi-colon, the kind of punctuation that you use is largely a stylistic choice. Especially on a personal blog, a writer might choose to use sentence fragments, or run-on sentences, for effect. For example, to simulate comedic timing.

And people who correct other people's grammer on the internet are assholes.

Okay, this is three years old, but no one mentioned this. I don't wear contacts, but I know quite a few people who do, and they DON'T LET YOU LEAVE the eye doctor until you successfully put them in. So while it's entirely possible that you could still have trouble doing it the next time, it shouldn't be THAT hard, because you're guaranteed to have done it at least once.